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Liars! Liars! Green Pants on Fire!

by alan Caruba

January 26, 2004

What else can you call the authors of an article in an early January edition of the journal Nature, other than liars? Their assertion of mass extinctions of species by 2050, resulting from global warming, is pure fiction, but it was trumpeted in a January 7 press release from Conservation International as the "most comprehensive analysis to date." and it received worldwide news coverage.

as this is being written, the temperature outside my window is about ten degrees above zero and mid-to-late January is setting records for frigid arctic air flowing from the North. One would think that the press might pause a moment to contemplate the weather outside, actual weather records, and the claims that global warming is just around the corner. It bothers me that the press, after decades of this kind of Green blather, is so irresponsible about such stories. Unfailingly they leap upon the wild claim and rarely, if ever, seek credible scientists to refute it. If they do find someone to quote, it is always buried deep in the story.

The other thing that really bothers me is that it was just one more Big Green Lie from so-called scientists in the never-ending effort to frighten the public into believing that (1) the global warming theory has any basis in fact and (2) that every human activity on Earth must be made subservient to avoid it. Conservation International (CI) began by claiming "Climate change could drive more than a quarter of land animals and plants into extinction, according to a major new study published in tomorrow’s edition of the journal Nature."

Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, writing in the January 15 issue of the Washington Times, issued a timely warming that "The politicization of scientific papers on global warming and the tendency of science journals to rush to judgment have to end."

Notice, too, that the Greens have dropped "global warming" in favor of the term "climate change." This might be because their effort to get the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol on Climate Control ratified has proved a massive failure. Its so-called science has been refuted. (Even the Russians refused to ratify it once they realized it would destroy their nascent capitalist economy. This is a treaty that exempted Red China and India from even having to participate!) It was the same so-called science journal, Nature, which in 1996 published a paper supporting the global warming theory just one day before the UN conference that gave birth to the Kyoto Protocol.

CI informs us that it "applies innovations in science, economics, policy and community participation to protect the Earth’s richest regions of plant and animal diversity in the hotspots, major tropical wilderness areas and key marine ecosystems. With headquarters in Washington,DC, CI works in almost 40 countries on four continents." apparently, "innovations" include publishing bogus scientific studies.

as the Competitive Enterprise Institute was quick to point out, the latest study, co-authored by 19 "researchers", was based on "computer modeling" for its predictions. Global warming is, of course, also based on computer modeling. There isn’t a computer large enough or even a system of linked computers that can reliably predict the weather much beyond three to five days. In February 2003, the worst blizzard in seven years shut down a broad swath of the eastern United States. The National Weather Service, which has some of the most sophisticated computers ever made, was very, very surprised by the severity of the blizzard.

The weather is the very definition of chaos. No computer model can possibly take in the constant changes that occur everywhere on the globe. at best, they do a credible job of spotting conditions about forty-eight to seventy-two hours ahead of events.

Computer "models" can produce just about any result they are intended to achieve. Statistics can lie and liars can use statistics.

Writing for Tech Central Station in early January, Iain Murray neatly dispatched the conclusion of the study. "There are several reasons this claim should be laughed out of the court of public opinion. The research doesn’t say what the researchers themselves claim. They have extrapolated to all species a model that looked at only 1,103 species in certain areas (243 of those species were South american poroteaceae, a family of evergreen shrubs and trees). For one thing, we don’t know how many species there are---estimates vary from 2 million to 80 million---and have only documented 1.6 million. However, assuming the 14 million figure widely used in the press reports is anywhere near accurate, the same size is a mere 0.008 percent of the total species population of the plant…"

So, based on 0.008 percent of aLL species on Earth, CI and this group of loathsome little researchers felt free to predict the extinction of more than a million species. They ignored the fact that an increase in the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, would have a most salutary effect of enhancing the growth of all manner of vegetation worldwide. Those creatures that dine on that vegetation would no doubt benefit and reproduce in greater numbers. In short, the study was bunkum!

Murray concludes his analysis of this latest study by noting "In a world that has seen a grand total of just over 1,000 documented extinctions since 1600, these wild predictions should be ignored as alarmist hyperbole." He’s being polite.

It is alarmist and it is hyperbole, but it also represents virtually every so-called scientific study that has been put forth by the Greens on the topic of global warming. Oh, excuse me, "climate change." Never mind that the climate changes all the time and always will, it is hardly a reason to return to the golden age of horse-drawn buggies, outhouses, and the use of oxen in agriculture.

We are rapidly reaching the point of critical mass where all such Green claims should lead to the implosion of this evil social and economic philosophy and quasi-religion that worships the Earth and would gladly see the entire human race go extinct to "save" it from us.

No, millions of species will not go extinct by 2050, but one can fervently pray that the environmental movement will.